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First published in 1977, Robert Day's The Last Cattle Drive-an instant bestseller and Book-of-the-Month Club selection-is now a modern-day Western classic. This raucous, rollicking novel of a cattle drive in the age of the automobile revived a genre and added its own special twists in capturing the imagination of readers nationwide. To honor the thirtieth anniversary of its publication, the University Press of Kansas is proud to announce a new deluxe limited edition of this much-loved work. This special edition of 500 copies, each signed and numbered by the author, includes these new features: a foreword by acclaimed Western historian Howard R. Lamar, reflecting on the novel's enduring popularity; an afterword by Robert Day recalling the experience of writing the novel and commenting on his own literary heroes (among them Mark Twain); "The Last Cattle Drive Stampede," Day's hilarious piece about failed attempts to make a movie of the book; and special endpaper maps of the cattle-drive route. Whether you're renewing your affection for an old favorite or coming to the work for the first time, this new edition will be a book to treasure and return to time and time again. "I [feel] honored and privileged to have the opportunity to express my enduring admiration for Robert Day and his delightfully readable, humorous, and plain-spoken novel, [which] I have been re-reading over and over for nearly three decades. . . . Day's lively portrait of his beloved home state of Kansas, often saddled by stereotypical images of being sternly Protestant, conservative, and teetotalling, instead becomes an example of a vibrant, varied society of free-wheeling individuals, rural and city men and women, who enjoy their tomato beer and whiskey and have strong opinions about what is wrong with the U.S. government and incorrect television and film versions of Kansas and the West."-Howard Lamar "Bob Day's novel is like the man himself-ebullient, precise, Rabelaisian, witty. It's written in remarkably fine North American English. It wears its cowboy boots, as does the author himself, very comfortably and with a highly polished panache."-Anthony Burgess "The sense of place, the Kansas world of enormous horizons, pickup trucks, and Coors beer, is well conveyed and . . . highly seductive."-Times Literary Supplement "Call it a mid-western. Call it cowboys and urbanites. Call it well-written entertainment."-Booklist